Virginia working women demonstrate and then precipitate a "Bread Riot"in the Confederate capital

04/02/1863

A large group of working class demonstrators - mostly women suffering the effects of food prices and low wages on their families - assembled and then marched on the governor's mansion in Richmond, Virginia. Governor Letcher met with them briefly but the disatisfied crowd became a mob and began looting shops and market stalls along Main Street. Soldiers were called and only the intervention of President Jefferson Davis, who talked personally to the rioters, averted bloodshed. (By John Osborne)

Source Citation:

Allen C. Guelzo, Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 325-326.